Geography

Mexico is bordered by the United States to the
north and Belize and Guatemala to the southeast. Mexico is about one-fifth
the size of the United States. Baja California in the west is an 800-mile
(1,287-km) peninsula that forms the Gulf of California. In the east are the
Gulf of Mexico and the Bay of Campeche, which is formed by Mexico's other
peninsula, the Yucatán. The center of Mexico is a great, high
plateau, open to the north, with mountain chains on the east and west and
with ocean-front lowlands beyond.

Government

Federal republic.

History

At least three great civilizations—the
Mayas, the Olmecs, and the Toltecs—preceded the wealthy Aztec
empire, conquered in 1519–1521 by the Spanish under Hernando
Cortés. Spain ruled Mexico as part of the viceroyalty of New Spain
for the next 300 years until Sept. 16, 1810, when the Mexicans first
revolted. They won independence in 1821.

From 1821 to 1877, there were two emperors,
several dictators, and enough presidents and provisional executives to
make a new government on the average of every nine months. Mexico lost
Texas (1836), and after defeat in the war with the U.S. (1846–1848),
it lost the area that is now California, Nevada, and Utah, most of Arizona
and New Mexico, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado under the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo. In 1855, the Indian patriot Benito Juárez began
a series of reforms, including the disestablishment of the Catholic
Church, which owned vast property. The subsequent civil war was
interrupted by the French invasion of Mexico (1861) and the crowning of
Maximilian of Austria as emperor (1864). He was overthrown and executed by
forces under Juárez, who again became president in 1867.

Bloody Political Strife and Trouble with the U.S.

The years after the fall of the dictator
Porfirio Diaz (1877–1880 and 1884–1911) were marked by bloody
political-military strife and trouble with the U.S., culminating in the
punitive U.S. expedition into northern Mexico (1916–1917) in
unsuccessful pursuit of the revolutionary Pancho Villa. Since a brief
civil war in 1920, Mexico has enjoyed a period of gradual agricultural,
political, and social reforms. The Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR;
National Revolutionary Party), dominated by revolutionary and reformist
politicians from northern Mexico, was established in 1929; it continued to
control Mexico throughout the 20th century and was renamed the Partido
Revolucionario Institucional (PRI; Institutional Revolutionary Party) in
1946. Relations with the U.S. were disturbed in 1938 when all foreign oil
wells were expropriated, but a compensation agreement was reached in
1941.

Economic Growth

Following World War II, the government
emphasized economic growth. During the mid-1970s, under the leadership of
President José López Portillo, Mexico became a major
petroleum producer. By the end of Portillo's term, however, Mexico had
accumulated a huge external debt because of the government's unrestrained
borrowing on the strength of its petroleum revenues. The collapse of oil
prices in 1986 cut Mexico's export earnings. In Jan. 1994, Mexico joined
Canada and the United States in the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), with the plan to phase out all tariffs over a 15-year period, and in
Jan. 1996, it became a founding member of the World Trade Organization
(WTO).

In 1995, the U.S. agreed to prevent the collapse
of Mexico's private banks. In return, the U.S. won virtual veto power over
much of Mexico's economic policy. In 1997, in what observers called the
freest elections in Mexico's history, the PRI lost control of the lower
legislative house and the mayoralty of Mexico City in a stunning upset. To
increase democracy, President Ernesto Zedillo said in 1999 that he would
break precedent and not personally choose the next PRI presidential
nominee. Several months later, Mexico held its first presidential primary,
which was won by former interior secretary Francisco Labastida, Zedillo's
closest ally among the candidates.

Turn of the Century Presidential Elections

In elections held on July 2, 2000, the PRI lost
the presidency, ending 71 years of one-party rule. The new president,
Vicente Fox Quesada of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), vowed
tax reform, an overhaul of the legal system, and a reduction in power of
the central government. By 2002, however, Fox had made little headway on
his ambitious reform agenda. Disfavor with Fox was evident in 2003
parliamentary elections, when the PRI rebounded.

In 2004, a two-year investigation into the
“dirty war,” which Mexico's authoritarian government waged
against its opponents in the 1960s and 1970s, led to an
indictment—later dropped—against former president Luis
Echeverria for ordering the 1971 shooting of student protesters.

In 2005, Andrés Manuel López
Obrador, the enormously popular mayor of Mexico City, emerged as a
presidential candidate for the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution.
López Obrador seemed likely to defeat the party of the deeply
unpopular incumbent, Vicente Fox. But in Oct. 2005, Felipe Calderón
unexpectedly became the candidate of Fox's National Action Party (PAN),
defeating Fox's chosen successor. By spring 2006, Felipe Calderón
had caught up to López Obrador in opinion polls. In the July
election, Calderón won 35.9% of the vote, a razor-thin margin over
López Obrador, who received 35.3%. López Obrador appealed
the election, but on Aug. 28, Mexico's top electoral court rejected
López Obrador's allegations of fraud. His supporters held massive
protest rallies before and after the verdict. Calderón was sworn in
on Dec. 1. He vowed to make fighting the drug cartels a top priority, and he dispatched tens of thousands of soldiers and police to confront them.

Drug Violence Plagues the Country

In May 2008, Attorney General Eduardo Medina
Mora announced that over 4,000 people had been killed in drug-related
violence since President Calderon took office—1,400 of the deaths
occurred in 2008 alone.

In Aug. 2008, hundreds of thousands of
protesters across the country marched for the more than 2,700 people who
were killed and 300 kidnapped in drug-related violence since January
2008. In Dec. 2008, the number of killings registered between 1 January and 2 December was 5,376—a rise of 117% from the previous year. In Nov. 2008 alone, there were 943 drug-related murders.

In Dec. 2008, the U.S. released $197 million of a $400 million plan called the Merida Initiative to help Mexico fight the drug cartels, yet drug violence continued mostly unabated. By the end of 2009, an estimated 6,500 people had been killed in drug-related violence.

Late April and early May 2009 brought a new challenge: a flu outbreak. A new strain of influenza, known as swine flu, originated in Mexico and spread to at least 24 other countries. The World Health Organization declared that a pandemic was a possibility. Originally, Swine Flu was thought to be quite dangerous, though as time passed, Mexican authorities said they may have overestimated the threat. As a precaution, the Mexican government shut down all nonessential business for five days starting on May 1, 2009. Other governments limited travel to and from Mexico.

Despite Calderón's pledge to bring down the drug cartels, drug-related violence escalated into 2010. After the fatal shooting in March 2010 of a pregnant U.S. consulate employee by an alleged drug trafficker, Calderón stepped up his pressure on the U.S. to take responsibility for its role in the crisis; U.S. arms traffickers supply weapons to the cartels and drug users in the U.S. are consumers of Mexican drugs. As the violence spilled over into the U.S., officials did in fact acknowledge the country's role in the growing problem and the potential risks to U.S. national security. The U.S. and Mexico revised their counternarcotics strategy with a $330 million program intended to expand the Merida Initiative, which was begun under President Bush. The plan includes strengthening poor communities to give citizens alternatives to crime, better screening at the border, and shifting the focus of funding from military equipment to a civilian police force that will patrol Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez.

Drug-Related Violence Continues

More than 34,600 deaths due to drug-related violence have been reported in President Felipe Calderón's first four years of office. According to the government, 2010 was the heaviest year yet with 15,237 people being killed. In October 2010, the government announced its plan to do away with the country's 2,200 local police department and place all officers under one unified command.

In February 2011, the U.S. began flying unarmed drones over Mexico to collect and turn over information to Mexican law enforcement agencies. One drone reportedly provided information on suspects linked to the Feb. 15 killing of Jaime Zapata, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. In July 2011, violence broke out in several cities. Over 20 people were killed in Monterrey when armed men began firing on a bar. During the same weekend, 11 people were found dead from gunshot wounds just outside Mexico City and 10 decapitated heads were found in Torreon. Although authorities did not identify suspects in the killings, officials said that all of the incidents occurred in the wake of cartel fights.

On November 11, 2011, Francisco Blake Mora, Mexico's secretary of the interior, died in a helicopter crash. The crash killed all eight passengers onboard. Due to his position, Mora, the country's second most powerful government official, led the battle against drug traffickers. His death was a major blow to Calderón's presidency. Calderón appointed Mora to his cabinet in July 2010. Mora became the second interior minister killed during Calderón's term. Calderón's first interior minister was killed in a plane crash almost exactly three years ago.

Party Official Resigns as the Presidential Election Approaches

In December 2011, Humberto Moreira resigned from his position as president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Moreira stepped down because of a financial scandal which threatened his party's chances in the 2012 presidential election. News media coverage connected Moreira to debt and loan irregularities in Coahulia, a state which he governed until January 2011.

His party's candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, became the early frontrunner in the 2012 presidential election. He worked to convince voters that the Institutional Revolutionary Party has moved passed its history of corruption.

In February 2012, Josefina Vázquez Mota was chosen as a presidential candidate for Mexico's National Action Party. Mota, an economist and former education secretary, becomes the first woman nominated by a major party to run for president. "I am going to be the first woman president in history," said Mota, accepting the nomination. After a narrow defeat in the 2006 Presidential election, Andrés Manuel López Obrador was nominated again by the Democratic Revolutionary Party to run in the presidential election, which occurs in July 2012.

Enrique Peña Nieto Easily Wins Presidential Election

On July 1, 2012, Enrique Peña Nieto was elected president. A member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Peña Nieto received 38 percent of the vote, defeating both National Action Party candidate Josefina Vázquez Mota and Democratic Revolutionary Party candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who lost the 2006 President election by a slim margin.

Peña Nieto's victory was another political shift in a country plagued with a violent, ongoing drug war and economic uncertainty. After ruling the country since 1929, Peña Nieto's party, PRI, suffered a huge defeat in 2000. Since 2000, the country has been in a period of multiparty democracy. During his campaign, Peña Nieto promised voters a change in Mexico's fight against the drug war. He vowed to focus more on reducing violence instead of making arrests and raids in attempts to block drugs from getting into the United States.